Not today

I don't know if you can see, changes that have come over me

Ah, I'm having a patriotic moment. The homesick Scot song, Caledonia on an advert to "try" and persuade Scots to come home in 2009. Because, like, it's so much better here... What do you want with a good job? Beautiful scenery to the left of you, don't look right.

Possible cynicism at the timing, just before Hogmanay and all...

You can view the ad here, if it gets to work, if it doesn't, it features actors Sir Sean Connery and Brian Cox, cycling star Chris Hoy and golfer Sam Torrance, musicians Lulu, Sandi Thom, Eddi Reader and Amy Macdonald, plus Kelly Brown and Thom Evans from the Scotland rugby team.

It's cheesetastic, but it made me proud for a moment. I want Sean Connery to read me bedtime stories. I know, I know, but he's damned lovely. I keep replaying that and swooning at his bit.

This song was featured on one of my favourite ever adverts, a Tennents one from 1990:



Sigh. Grand. I wish it was 1990.

So the guy gets sick of London, he heads home to Scotland, takes in the beauty of Edinburgh... and goes to a pub for a pint of Tennents? Like he wouldn't head to the chippy for a white pudding supper and a tin of Irn Bru?

Irn Bru ought to be the one thing that represents Scotland. It's special. It's magical for curing hangovers. We're the only country in the world (I think) that doesn't have Coke as the best selling soft drink. We have Irn Bru fridges. We have Irn Bru taxis. We love Irn Bru.

Come home, we drink Irn Bru here. That's enough to get anyone home.

Also from about 1990, the best Irn Bru advert ever, a parody of Coke adverts, and erm, it was about 1990, it's not its fault:



More here

I apologise to the eardrums of anyone that clicked all of those, it's all terrible, I know this. It makes me proud to be a Scot though, cheese and all.

Snippets of airy nothing

3am, 750 words of 2000-3000. Decision taken to invoke the "5pm Friday is the same as 9am Monday" rule.
9am, approximately 700 of those words discovered to be irrelevant.
Dammit.

I am so disorganised. I should have just watched Buzzcocks last night. Mark Watson was on it! I love him, even if he is but a child.

I *need* to sleep. Not write. Not amuse hyper people.

Is it wrong to have pistachio ice cream for breakfast? I have some and it's divine. Pistachio. The elusivest and tastiest of ice creams. With bings of pistachios in. If you want chocolate ice cream, you just go to a shop and buy chocolate ice cream. Not true with pistachio, and there it was just sitting in Tesco's freezer looking all pistachio-y.

It's just a nut thing. I may continue with the daily nut related supermarket news. I may not.

No. I'll have a muffin. Not healthy, but at least it's sort of breakfast fayre.

Genius is in fact genius.
It's marvellous.
Get it now. You just turn on Genius in iTunes, wait several years for it to check all your dodgy downloads and sometime in another lifetime it will be done and you simply click on a song, click the genius button and tada! A playlist of joy. You have to go back to iTunes to delete the ones that it gets a bit wrong, but so far out of 50 songs, I've had to delete 3.

I did another playlist, this time from Human by The Killers, which I still love, and the playlist is spectacular (mostly). For one, it includes Intervention by Arcade Fire which is exactly spot on, and again, it's included stuff I thought I didn't like (Beck? White Stripes?) and yet I do. Except for two hideous errors, Celine Dion and the Spice Girls, but that's my own fault for not deleting their albums when we accidentally got the entire Top 40 a few months ago. Genius probably thinks I like all that cack, Connie Talbot and other people I had to Google to find out who they were. Anyway, Genius is fab. I am very lazy when it comes to listening to music, especially with the ease of playlists, I tend to listen to the songs I like and rarely "discover" new ones. The radio is my only salvation usually. I went through and copied the songs I like off the server onto my beloved the other day, and now Genius is picking the Other Songs for me. It's a revelation in toons.

I'm liking this cheapness thing. Every time I open my email there's a pile of messages telling me things are reduced, free delivery, 20% off, free stuff, more free stuff, please please buy stuff. I've dispatched a spy to go and see if Woolworths are giving away their stock yet. I'm noticing a lot of "2 for the price of less than 1!" offers. It's good, even if we have to ignore the fiscal implications. We all HAVE to buy stuff, our economy depends on you buying some stuff. Yes you, go buy that thing you reckon you shouldn't. It's not extravagance, it's survival.

Tomorrow: a blog entry where one paragraph has anything remotely to do with the following one.

Things you probably wouldn't want to do #825,321.75

People that like to have a rant: the Scots
Subject they like to rant about: the Union, whatever their stance on it

So would anyone in their right mind have an open comments site for Scots (or indeed anyone else that cared, ie noone) to comment on a proposed referendum for independence?

Yup.

The National Conversation.

We are only 3 months behind here, which is quite good as yesterday we were in 2006.

I've read something like 6 comments and I'm itching to say something. Itching. Itching. I shall refrain, because "oh my god get me away from these cretins, I quite like England and I LOVE Wales" probably wouldn't be all that helpful. I don't believe that's representative of what I actually think about independence anyway. I want to be (properly) part of Europe. Or we could form an alliance with Norway and Switzerland and go completely in the other direction. Hmm. I don't know what I think. I need someone to understand politics for me and explain it s-l-o-w-l-y. Or I might become a politician.

Scarily, this looks like they want the people of Scotland to think up their own constitution. 24 hour compulsory drinking, free fags and regular stoning of the English does not a constitution make.

Fla fla fla. Roads and stuff.

oh.

Hello? Anyone? Is anything happening when I type things?



Bah.

Once in a blue moon I think I manage to say something intelligent and relevant in a discussion and then... no. Sorry. You can't join in. Go back and play with your barbies. What? You wanted to say something? You already did? Ha ha ha ha.

Or maybe I'm just an idiot. I don't know. Maybe it's not intelligent comment, maybe it's uneducated gibbering. I don't know. Not talking might help.

more

Waaaaaaaah. Strop. Tantrum.

I don't like people. I'm going to go and talk to my phone.

How to Procrastinate

it's exactly midnight. oooh.

So, I've had some smashing news tonight. Apparently in order to be flat tummed one needs to not have had twins. No. That's not what it said. In order to be flat tummed one should eat olives, olive oil, avocado, nuts, seeds and dark chocolate. They're all supposed to be bad, but they're good. Virtuous. Marvellous.
(procrastination by means of reading a magazine)

More smashing news: I've lost 3lb. Hurrah. It's nice when that happens by accident. And my Wii Fit age today is 27.
(procrastination by "exercise")

iTunes is now processing 2365 of 2754 album artworks. Almost done.
(pure procrastination)

Traffic Policy and Road Pricing: motorists paid £32bn in road related taxes in 2006, of which £8bn was used on the roads, almost exclusively for repairs and anti traffic measures.

“The United Kingdom ranks poorly in
international comparison both on survey
based measures regarding the quality of
transport infrastructure and on measures
of congestion.”

ZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzz

Sainsburys have cashew nuts in their basics range! I have no idea how much they are, I may have paid £17.50 for some cashew nuts, but still. Cheap nuts!
(procrastination by shopping)

EDIT: They're £1.45 for 200g. A saving of 54p over the non basic ones. I feel cheated.

The staff of Sainsburys all say hello to me. I can't decide if this is mortifyingly embarrassing at my frequency of visits (most days) or if it's a compliment to my sunny disposition and general willingness to chat to anyone that stands still long enough.
(procrastination by pondering)

Traffic Policy.

There's no motorway direct link between Manchester and Sheffield? How appalling. Really I think I want to move to Germany.

Can it take 2000-3000 words to say: "Traffic Policy in this country sucks, we should all move to Germany"?

No.

Is ok. Have found report that says pretty much what I want to. So creative stealing required of references and general ideas, which is quite definitely not plagiarism, it's research, that's all.

I might sleep. It'll write itself in the morning. A very wise person said quite recently "that's what the night before handing in day is for, right".
And that's not tonight.
(procrastination by denial)

Nytol.

Note to self

Shut up.

Inertia

Oh fla.
I've woken up in one of those moods. This happened some time ago and I've been stagnating since. Should really be cheerful but swamped with inadequacy today.

I've got so many things to do, and most of 101 things I mostly don't need to do, and I'm in a sort of defeatist mood. Can't write owt on account of being uninteresting. Traffic policy isn't interesting. Can't write owt on account of being stupid. Not actually stupid. Can't paint ceilings on account of the fact that the essay's more important. Can't make phonecalls on account of being snivelly.
Need to do stuff. Need kick up backside.

Fester fester, I have no idea why I'm blogging this.

Genius

A friend of mine was telling me yesterday how great the iTunes Genius playlist thing is. And so I spent half my day yesterday activating it and I have my first Genius playlist on my beloved.

What it does: takes a song and suggests similar songs from your library and compiles a playlist, this one has 20 songs which may or may not be standard.

The song I started from was 'Annie Let's not Wait' by Guillemots, which I think is a great song. Now, iTunes has the pick of a large and eclectic library, partly because of my tendency in the past to buy dodgy compilations, greatest hits and pop shite just because I liked one track, and partly due to the ease with which things can be downloaded. So this is what it produced:

Annie Let's not Wait - Guillemots
Had Enough - The Enemy
You Can't Have it All - Ash
Nature's Law - Embrace
Slight Return - The Bluetones
Another Girl, Another Planet - The Only Ones
Tranquillize - The Killers feat Lou Reed
This is How it Feels - Inspiral Carpets
Motorcycle Emptiness - Manic Street Preachers
Wondering - Dirty Pretty Things
You're not Alone - The Enemy
House Party at Boothy's - Little Man Tate
One Day Like This - Elbow
You're Gorgeous - Babybird
You're Gonna Lose us - Cribs
A Design for Life - Manic Street Preachers
Rose - The Feeling
Going Missing - Maximo Park
Pass it On - The Coral

Now, some of those are songs I know I like - the ones by Elbow and The Only Ones being the best, but some of them are songs by bands I actively dislike - Maximo Park, Cribs and The Enemy being the worst. And The Feeling and The Coral are repetitively almost offensive mostly. But, with the exception of the Cribs, I actually have enjoyed listening to all these songs. Ones like The Feeling one are like, yeah, I KNEW I liked something they did, so woop woop, all hail Apple.

I'll worry about the information Apple now have, tomorrow.

brainbreak

I had something I wanted to blog about but I got distracted on the way here and so forgot completely what it was.

Never mind, there is always later.

Clearly I need to share the distractions.

First, this is from Andrew Collins' blog, so if you've been there already, this is repetition . I think this is brilliantly done, it's really impressive. Much kudos to Nathan Jay.

In my esteemed estimation, a gentleman of a certain age with a desire for a pink digital watch is most definitely gay. Or, fauxmosexual in an attempt to impress the ladies. Deeply suspicious anyway.

It occurred to me sometime earlier that Christmas is one month today. I have done nothing towards Christmas except buy the kids' presents, and I'm a bit skint. Problemo. So I'm off to buy some stuff to bake some Christmas presents. I may have lost my last remaining friends by New Year.

cheese: the thinking man's toothpaste

Wrong

Why do we...

shout the most at the person that least deserves it?

expect the most from those who have the least to give?

try hardest at the things that matter least?

wish most for the things least attainable?

worry most about the least likely eventuality?


It's all very silly.

iLove

I love my phone. True love, soulmate style. Really, it has all the things I look for* in a soulmate: pedantry, good books and music, fondness of being and ability to be online at all times, shiny good looks and the ability to be in my pocket at all times. If it was a better photographer I think I'd leave my husband for it, but hey, noone's perfect.

Anyway, I'm beside myself (right there, look) with joy today because I got a software upgrade yesterday which has solved some of my (minor) gripes and made it even more wonderful. I now have a Google button on the browser and I can download podcasts direct from iTunes. Wowee. The 2Gb of 38 podcasts are downloading themselves as I type, with no need for a PC at all! Wowee!
AND my Sony Fontopia headphones have been returned to their rightful owner, me, and all sounds perfect again. No more hiss from enforced use of the lesser Creative ones. Ear buds are amazing. I have storymakers on repeat and Cars on, and I can hear Mssrs C and H.

The iPhone is the greatest thing I have ever owned. I love it more than I loved my Volvo (RIP) and I have no idea how I functioned without it. Oh, the fickleness of looking at Other Phones. This is the phone I was born to own. Oh yes.


*possibly hyperbole and indeed, a complete lie.

stillness and sadeness

Sunday morning, deep and crisp and even.



There's not much nicer than a proper winter's day. Wrapped up snug and warm, playing in the snow, taking pictures of the stillness...

Wondering where the ducks and geese have gone, as the seagulls screech and bicker for some bread.



Just pretty.

That last one, taken by iPhone in an attempt to share a moment. Doesn't compare very well in terms of clarity, but oh! how it captures the light.

And no, not a sad day. A nice one spent with family and friends, on a tedious trip to the Falkirk Wheel, interesting to look at, not interesting to journey on. Photos for that were captured only by phone due to the camera having a moment and not all that worth sharing. Brilliant guide, very funny guy, also very pleasant to be on a canal boat but it goes so very s-l-o-w-l-y and takes an hour, nearly.

More friends, more family, no stopping today. Severe lack of sleep made this arduous: not a good family member, not a supportive friend, just a sleepy, slightly dreamy, lump.

Sadeness (the e is from enigma: cum angelis et pueris, fideles inveniamur) only appeared late on in a residential care home. A wish tree stands in the entrance hall, star stickers with wishes written on them are stuck to its leaves. Two that caught my eye said "to have tea with my family" and "to go to a football match". My heart cracked in two, so much we take for granted. I would have liked to wish for all the wishes to come true, but there were no stickers.
I wished it to the angels instead.

Pix pix pix

It's too cold to do anything. A trip to the park was frosty and chilling, made worthwhile by the starvingness of the ducks, geese and seagulls we fed bread to.




But still, homeward and snuggled indoors, and a bit bored. So I got out the camera and took some pictures. Of cupboards. Well, it was sort of a meme...


The fridge:
and yes, it is the biggest fridge I could find. It's got a freezer below and back in the days when I spoke to people, I had everyone at their correct height pictured on the front.



cupboard 1: pasta and the likes, drinks, tins, misc:



Cupboard 2: spices and oils and what not:



Cupboard 3: jams and sauces and drinks and sweets:




And then we have the sum total of all the books that aren't piled up, earmarked for charity or the four large bookcases worth that are in storage (since last Jan! Sob!):



Then the bathroom...

Hypochondria cabinet:



And girlie hideaway:



And that's the lot. Everything else is in storage, apart from clothes which are a Big Problem.

I did a mood board. Well, I started. I had this great idea that I could use images on the PC instead of scissors, but I only have paint on this surrogate laptop and so everything is square. Not so perfect.

This is as far as I got before I got bored...



and there. the products of a bored mind on a cold day.

Honestly random

Bright eyes, always cheering.

We can work it out, which is always a reassurance because everybody hurts, sometimes. It may be all or nothing but that's the way in a mad world. To fix you would be atomic and then you'd surely run. Nothing tender for an innocent man. Always Victoria, baby, you're a rich man.

Look at all these things I've done, can't you read my mind? It may be an epidemic, yet when all you need is love, where is my love? Somebody told me the one I love, Denis, became a taxman.

I'm only sleeping because I just can't get enough. I guess I'm dreaming, still we must stand as absolute beginners in a perfect circle. Why worry about chasing cars, the village green preservation society don't get good vibrations from wires.

All I need, to be the apologist; my gift of silence.

See you in the next one (have a good time)

No B

"There's no b in television"

That's what I was woken up to be told. This is true. Given that the person telling me this has but the vaguest grasp of letters and spelling I should perhaps assume that the phrase was in fact "there's no bee in television", also correct, if grammatically less well formed, but I think the first option is more profound. Should I ever form a company, that will be our motto, but only if the company has nothing to do with televisions. Or spelling.

Erasure of lunacy required this morning. Oops, oops, shut up more.

A message to Google:

Dear Google

I apologise profusely for purchasing an iPhone. I also apologise for referring to the G1 Google Phone Android T Mobile thing that noone can agree a name on, as "the gay phone", but it is white and pretty gay looking. But phone issues aside, I'm a good little Googler. My life is enGoogled. I think I use everything you want me to and really I couldn't do more. Other than buy a oogle phone, but hey, I use Google, I didn't get a w****** mobile one.

So, please explain why you persist in Not Working? And randomly being a bit odd with gmail? And why has my inbox gone all pastel?

Regards

Grumpy McCatfish


Other things I have run out of energy to type properly about:

Santa does exist. Evidence for this: none.

Do I need 5 Lloyd Grossman Sauces, 3 of which are Primavera and 5 tins of baked beans? Given that tins have very long lives, should I be ashamed that there was a tin of apricots lurking at the back of the cupboard that went off in 2005?

Why am I 33? I actually did a calculation this morning to double check I've not made a mistake. Luckily I am still 33, the worst thing in the world would be to discover that I'm 32 and that this year of perpetual self questioning would be ahead of me. But how lovely if I'd remembered that I'd actually been born in 1974 and I'm 34 after all. No. Still 1975. Still 33 years ago. Long winded explanations would lead to the conclusion that ages ending in 3 are those of great things, leading to huge upheavals and changes for the better in the age ending with 4. So something in this stagnatory plodding must be happening for the better, something (subtle) is happening now that will lead to great things next year.
Whatever, 7 weeks tomorrow I'll be 34 and all will be well with the world.

I have now to go and look for square balls.

Moments

I've had a few moments today, little snatches of niceness amid the mundanity of day to day drudgery.

Steve Wright's Golden Oldies sometimes are marvellous (for those of us who like old stuff better). Today in the car I heard the following:

"Waterloo Sunset" by the Kinks. I love the Kinks, Ray Davies is a god and this is one of their best.

"Tin Soldier" by the Small Faces. I love the Small Faces, Steve Marriott was a god and this isn't one of their best but it's still them, it's still better than most songs.

"Baba O Reilly" by the Who. Jeremy Clarkson and I, and presumably some other people but noone I've met, like the Who and this is probably their best song. That or "Behind Blue Eyes", but Limp Bizkit actually did that better.

"With a Little Help from My Friends" by Joe Cocker. This isn't great, but it has a superb intro.

"Ride a White Swan" by Marc Bolan and T Rex. Or that's what Shazam told me. I like this, I had no idea of its title.

and then

"Man of the World" by Fleetwood Mac which is one of the greatest songs on earth.

Liam whoever you are from wherever you're from, I love you.

Followed by watching the sun almost set on the beach. I'm having a hippy moment, the stuff that's really, really nice is just there.

Gratuitous picture as I'm appreciating the aesthetic and feel like being giggly again:

The Good, the Bad and the Chutney

The Good: Things what made me smile today

• My phone wants to auto correct "darth vader" to "earth cadet";
• Conversations about absolutely nothing: always nice;
• Overheard conversation with my son: "It's a screwdriver". "No, it's a truck driver";
• Other son on being questioned what had happened upon collision with his brother, "Ollie happened".
• The word "sanctimonious". It's a great word, and is always followed by some insulting term: bastard, git, swine etc. In fact, "sanctimonious swine" could in fact be the greatest combination of words ever.
  
• David Tennant is to be in a programme about Einstein. David Tennant! Einstein!
  

The Bad: Things what did not make me smile today

• The book I am reading has left the building. Nowhere to be seen;
• I am incapable of writing an email in the time it takes for dinner to cook without burning;
• Everyone's written a blimming book. Except me. Statistically, I am illiterate;
• Small fonts. I don't like specs, ok, and until my eyes are bad enough for contacts, I'd like nice proper sized fonts.
• I have no God any more. I don't like Strictly. I have no mind, I need guidance!
  

The Chutney: Things what were chutney related today

• Possibly misleading, there was no chutney today.

Friends

I blame Friends.
For everything.
I want to live in that world, I think I'd like to be Monica. Rachel has to end up with Ross, which is a fate worse than cheese, and Phoebe's too ditzy.

Anyway, having loved Friends obsessively for 8 years or so (took a while to catch on), life has been a crashing disappointment that it didn't turn out like that. See, they were older than me, and they were on when I was a student and had that sort of life, I even had a friend like Rachel, a friend like Monica and a friend like Phoebe (and people who were nothing like any of them, I think I was probably Janice), and we hung out for coffee and shared every waking thought together. Marvellous.

In Friends however, they were past being students. They were adults. They still lived in each others pockets and were there for each other. Sex and the City is the same thing I believe. Girls together having endless fun and being there for each other.

But in real life, people have children, jobs, commitments and time constraints, and no matter what the best intention is or how much you love someone to bits, there simply isn't space to have interwoven lives like you had when you were younger. You seem to float through and you have the same circle of friends that you always have, feeling mutually neglected, meeting up and promising not to leave it so long, and returning to email and facebook again.

Not all bad, I can post "Morag wants a hug" on facebook and almost instanteously have 15 lovely virtual hugs from friends all over the world, or as I did the other week in a less needy manner, put "Morag is turning vegetarian" and get debates and comments on the pros and cons of marinated tofu - just like that. But it's not the same really. It's all about the nice stuff, and beyond demanding hugs, you don't "talk".

"How are you?" automatically produces the response "fine", or "same as ever" even if the trueanswer is "I have spent the last week in tears, I think I'm having a nervous breakdown". Because everyone else is being shiny and happy and only presenting the happy stuff, you don't like to upset the apple cart by being miserable. Especially if the reason you're miserable is something pathetic and sounds really silly if you put it in words. So you keep it to yourself and go bonkers. Then somewhere down the line you drink way too much wine and confess that actually you're not all that fine, discover that your best friend has also been crying herself to sleep, that you are both appalled that you didn't know, that you couldn't help, that you really really really REALLY love each other and in future you will pick up the phone immediately as soon as there's something wrong. And you don't feel miserable any more because you talked about it and laughed about how silly you were being. Except you sober up, decide not to bother people and when they ask how you're doing, you say "fine"...

New friends come along, mostly when you're lonely in the same place at the same time; some of them become lifelong friends, most of them drift off again when the circumstances change, or when you lump all your annoyances at your other friends onto the new friend and they run away. I remember my hippy thought that it's nice to appreciate being even an insignificant part of someone's life for a while instead of bemoaning all the things they don't turn out to be. I forget that too often.

People are stupid. I do love all my friends and I'm pretty sure very few of them know that as I stagnate and mentally chastise them for ignoring me back. We all sit about feeling lonely, with the undialled phone by our side.

I just did a quiz in Psychologies magazine as to what I need from friendship. Apparently I need reassurance, which was hardly revelatory. Apparently it's not cool to ask for it though. Bugger.

Brum brum

oh my goodness. The real Brum is at the Cotswold Motor Museum and Toy Collection.

I must go immediately. Why didn't I know this when I lived near there? Why did noone tell me?

Love Brum. Detest the programme, but Brum really is a supercruisin' superhero.